Libs Elliott Class: Embracing the Chaos

Last Saturday, the London Modern Quilt Guild hosted Libs Elliott to teach an "Embracing the Chaos" workshop.  I signed up for this workshop months ago, but of course waited until the night before the shop in my stash for suitable fabrics and gather my supplies.  I needed to find around 10 co-ordinating fat quarters --I started with the fabric in the middle of this photo and added the other fabrics to the pile.  I ended up using the chartreuse fabric on the upper right but not the yellow on the upper left. 

Some of these fabrics have been in my stash for a while and a couple were recent additions.

Libs told us about how she designs her quilts using a grid and a randomizer on her computer to place pre-chosen blocks into the grid.

She brought along three quilts to show us and we spent quite a bit of time examining them and asking questions about how she chose her fabrics, colours and how she put the blocks together to make her quilts.

She recently was asked by Absolut vodka to design a special label for their Canada 150 bottles.  Several of the quilters brought along their bottles for her to sign.  (All bottles remained sealed during the workshop!)

Some people used pencil crayons to colour their designs before cutting into their fabrics but I jumped into using fabric and picked the fabrics as I went along making the blocks.

By the end of the day, I had all my blocks pieced except one. I pinned my rows together and labeled them so that I would be able to lay them out when I got home.

Earlier this week, I put my last block together and sewed all the blocks into a 30 by 30" flimsy.  I have picked out some thread for quilting and just need to get this top pin basted and quilted.  I will do another post when it is done.  This was a fun workshop and I would recommend taking a class with Libs if you ever get a chance.